Breaking: Unemployment stays at 9.7%

posted at 8:45 am on April 2, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published a good news/bad news report on employment today. The unemployment rate remained high at 9.7% in March, the same figure as in February. The economy added 162,000 jobs, with half coming in temporary or government work, as the Census Bureau began hiring its survey workers:

Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in March, and the unemployment rate held at 9.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Temporary help services and health care continued to add jobs over the month. Employment in federal government also rose, reflecting the hiring of temporary workers for Census 2010. Employment continued to decline in financial activities and in information. …

Temporary help services added 40,000 jobs in March. Since September 2009, temporary help services employment has risen by 313,000.

Employment in health care continued to increase in March (27,000), with the largest gains occurring in ambulatory health care services (16,000) and in nursing and residential care facilities (9,000). …

Employment in federal government was up over the month, reflecting the hiring of 48,000 temporary workers for the decennial census.

The news wasn’t all good. Marginally attached workers increased by 200,000 in March, and part-time by circumstance increased as well:

The number of persons working part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased to 9.1 million in March. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. (See table A-8.)

About 2.3 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in March, compared with 2.1 million a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)

In fact, the number of people working part-time for economic reasons rose to its highest level since December, 9.054 million, up almost 300,000 from February’s 8.791 million.

The number of unemployed rose again in March. In February, the total unemployed was 23.818 million; in March, it rose to 23,840 (seasonally adjusted). That’s still somewhat lower than December’s peak of 24.354 million, but it’s almost five million more than March 2009′s figure of 18.976 million, which was the first full month after passage of the stimulus bill Democrats pushed through in February 2009. Furthermore, the average duration of unemployment increased again to 31.2 weeks, the highest it’s been in months.

Here’s how the jobs report is playing out around the blogosphere. Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey finds the silver lining with the headline “Breaking: Unemployment stays at 9.7%.” …

This is clever, lumping temporary and government jobs together. It’s a bit like saying that Hank and Tommie Aaron hit 756 home runs, and I doubt many unemployed Americans would turn their noses up at a government job right now.

Well, the problem is that Hank Aaron had a job for longer than a year, which is a lot more than these Census workers can claim. The “government jobs” are also temporary. It’s not growth, nor does it lead to growth. It’s simply temporary overhead, more cost to the taxpayers.

Like I said, this is a mixed bag, with some good news outweighed by the bad, including the increase in the unemployed and the average duration of unemployment. The Census Bureau jobs are not the good news here.

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Comments

I know Ed didn’t mean this the way it sounded to me. I consider the whole report awful. Yes things supposedly are no worse than last month. The unemployment level is stuck at 9.7% for how many months now? Three, four? While the other data keeps changing. Therefore, “9.7%”=Not credible. Regardless of that, how many millions are STILL out of work and what are the prospects for the economy? So, IMHO, this is still awful and given the billions allocated a year ago for ‘stimulus’ it is catastrophic. At least there will be about 17 million highly motivated unemployed and underemployed voters going to the polls in November.

Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in March, and the unemployment
rate held at 9.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
If employment increased, shouldn’t the unemployment rate decline?

Also from the report:

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) in-
creased by 414,000 over the month to 6.5 million. In March, 44.1 percent of
unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.
Long term unemployment increases a lot more than “temporary employment” with 48K/162K being census workers.

Besides, I remember the Democrats hollering that with employment rising at the end of the last recession the jobs were “only” temporary or burger flipping.

Sorry, but that’s the bed you’ve laid down. Now lie in it.

We will not have real economic growth in this country until we have a government that is pro-business instead of one that is actively anti-business.

rbj on April 2, 2010 at 10:49 AM

The unemployment rate stayed the same because the number of people actively looking for jobs increased. If you’re unemployed and not actively looking for a job (such as “discouraged workers”) you wouldn’t be counted as unemployed. Because the economy seems to be improving, people such as “discouraged workers” have started looking for jobs again.

The Labor Department said employers added 162,000 jobs in March, the most since the recession began but below analysts’ expectations of 190,000. The total includes 48,000 temporary workers hired for the U.S. Census, also fewer than many economists forecast.

Private employers added 123,000 jobs, the most since May 2007.

In other words, the private sector outperformed economists’expectations. And the federal government – (namely the US Commerce Dept’s Cenusus Bureau) – the ones now in charge of America’s health care, underperformed in terms of its hiring. So once again the US government is holding the US economy back.

–I agree. It looks like the economy starting picking up three or four months ago and is continuing the expand.

Jimbo3 on April 2, 2010 at 11:13 AM

The democrats would like you to believe this is the first Recession we have ever recovered from, when, in fact, it should have never been this bad, or this long, if it hadn’t been for Obama’s attack on the private sector.

It is small and mid-sized businesses where employment is really created. I want to see data (not that I trust any data coming from this fascist regime) about new business creation or business expansion.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) in-
creased by 414,000 over the month to 6.5 million. In March, 44.1 percent of
unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more. (See table A-12.)

I hasten to add — TARP is still a slush fund, PPIP is still a joke, and the mortgage modification programs are way off their targets. It’s been my concern all along that this administration’s been ignoring fundamentals and papering it over with the stimulus money. There are still major vulnerabilities in the economy this bunch are doing nothing about, and that the financial reforms package won’t fix either.

First of all, Obama is just playing now a waiting game…economy is cyclical, it always has been.
This “cycle” has been extended by his poor policies, and will continue to be slow for many more years then needed.
But it will begin to get better, it is long overdue, it has to improve somewhat, as the baby boomers lose hope, retire early, and quite frankly die off.
The problem is this should have been over 9 months ago, recovery should be in full swing now…and all we here is it looks like, it may be, it kinda is.
“Recovery” will happen, but never to the extent it should…Obama’s and the liberals policies can’t mathematically work.
When the govt again is the largest contributor to the increase of employment, you have to have the employed to pay for that.
For every gov. worker, you need at least 100 private employees to pay for the wages and benefits of that employee.
Full recovery can only happen with a shrinking of government.
What liberals, especially people like Jimbo, can’t comprehend is that gov. only consumes, they create nothing.
And their consumption has increased faster then the economy is expanding…and they can’t see the very simple math.
Politicians know this, but they depend on stupid people not to see this…and it looks like they have a lot of stupid people who can’t do simple math.

Let me get this straight in feb we lost 40,000 jobs and the unemployment stays at 9.7% now we suppose to have gain 150,000 plus jobs and the unemployment rate is still 9.7%.So what happens next month if we don,t gain or loose any jobs the rate goes to 5%.Somebody is cooking the books and the people that are incharge of this web site should know that and quit spinning for Obama.

thmcbb on April 2, 2010 at 10:34 AM

I’m told it works more like this, thmcbb. Two groups of researchers have two different tasks. One group calls some homes and asks questions about the employment status of each of the adults in the household. The other group calls some businesses and asks how many jobs they’ve added or cut recently. Each group just samples the available information, for they can’t call everyone. Each makes estimates for the entire country based on their sample, then adjusts its estimates to discount yearly, seasonal changes. The two groups, two methods, and two sets of numbers continue to exist because economists have never thought either one to be entirely satisfactory.

Thmcbb, if someone were “cooking the books,” don’t you think they’d change the two sets of estimates to make them agree?

I think there is some fuzzy math going on at DOL. I talked to alot of people nation wide and no one is hiring. And if you read the article real close, there is roughly 22K jobs that are just thrown in there and does not say where they come from.

The democrats would like you to believe this is the first Recession we have ever recovered from, when, in fact, it should have never been this bad, or this long, if it hadn’t been for Obama’s attack on the private sector.

Recovery should have begun about a year ago.

cntrlfrk on April 2, 2010 at 11:20 AM

Actually, Obama is partially responsible for the sudden decline in consumer spending.

If people recall, the last 6 months of Obama’s campaign all we heard was “Great Depression, Great Depression, Great Depression” over and over and over on the airwaves. Of course people stopped spending on luxury items. Consumer spending plummeted.

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Right after Obama was elected, the “Great Depression” talk stopped. Immediately. Dead silence, you couldn’t find the phrase anywhere except maybe from a few pundits who obviously didn’t get the memo.

Now though, when you hear the “Great Depression” phrase used in a discussion about the current economy, it’s used in the phrase of how Obama kept us from going to another Great Depression. All while overlooking the fact his campaign rhetoric was partially responsible for creating the situation in the first place.

Nothing really changes, until a seismic event happens, and then things are never the same. A new normal is established. I believe we are on the cusp of such an event. When this new normal comes into existence and what it will look like is anybodies guess.

The unemployment rate stayed the same because the number of people actively looking for jobs increased. If you’re unemployed and not actively looking for a job (such as “discouraged workers”) you wouldn’t be counted as unemployed. Because the economy seems to be improving, people such as “discouraged workers” have started looking for jobs again.

Jimbo3 on April 2, 2010 at 11:03 AM

So in other words the unemployment rate is actually higher than 9.7 and this is truly little progress.

Actually, Obama is partially responsible for the sudden decline in consumer spending.

If people recall, the last 6 months of Obama’s campaign all we heard was “Great Depression, Great Depression, Great Depression” over and over and over on the airwaves. Of course people stopped spending on luxury items. Consumer spending plummeted.

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Right after Obama was elected, the “Great Depression” talk stopped. Immediately. Dead silence, you couldn’t find the phrase anywhere except maybe from a few pundits who obviously didn’t get the memo.

ButterflyDragon on April 2, 2010 at 12:03 PM

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

All this is 100% right, ButterflyDragon.

But conservatives like Ed should have known that the media would proudly pump the economy for Obama.

And as you indicated above, such pumping (or bashing) will be a self-fulling prophesy.

In light of economies being cyclical and in light of the known pumping that would occur, Ed should have known better than to preach doom and gloom and hope it helps take Congress away from the Democrats in November.

I agree with you that once you hit bottom the economy has no choice but to get better, but you and right2bright assume we’ve hit bottom. We haven’t. We hit an artificial, man made bottom, that is going to give way soon, and the free fall to the real bottom will start again.

Whew…I was worried, I was afraid it would go over 10%, this is so much better…
They nailed conservatives to the wall for 5% unemployment, they were relentless on the attacks about the homeless…in this administration, “more is better”…

right2bright on April 2, 2010 at 10:51 AM

Seems they’re intent on hanging on to the White House for another term. The One’s humongous ego aside, one has to ask ‘why?’ What do they have planned beyond what they’ve done already and what they can do for the remainder of the term with four more years?

Clearly they’re manipulating the job numbers, they’re holding off on the full effects of Socialized Medicine until after the 2012 elections, the stimulus was staggered so that more money will be released starting about now, they’re holding up the Dollar with Monopoly money, they’re holding interest rates low and maintaining a poor lending environment to stifle the flow of inflated money into the economy and thus hyperinflation, and I suspect that Soros and other billionaire (and millionaire) Socialists are manipulating the Stock Market.

The reason I say all that is because other than lackluster poll numbers, all other numbers we could point to and use to wake up sheeple are holding steady over the last few months. Clearly, they have their act together and making it difficult for Conservatives to make a strong case against them.

Actually, Obama is partially responsible for the sudden decline in consumer spending.

If people recall, the last 6 months of Obama’s campaign all we heard was “Great Depression, Great Depression, Great Depression” over and over and over on the airwaves. Of course people stopped spending on luxury items. Consumer spending plummeted.

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Right after Obama was elected, the “Great Depression” talk stopped. Immediately. Dead silence, you couldn’t find the phrase anywhere except maybe from a few pundits who obviously didn’t get the memo.

ButterflyDragon on April 2, 2010 at 12:03 PM

The average consumer has maxed their credit cards, and thanks to the housing crisis they have lost their equity ATM. The consumer is tapped. Reduce interest rates all you wish, but you can afford only so much of a bargain. We just had a smorgasbord of debt, at every level in the U.S. and now it’s time to pay. It Obama’s policies going forward are only going to aggravating the problem, but the current mess has little to do with who won the presidency in 2008, other than representing bad fiscal policy that he or McCain may have supported during their senatorial careers.

Temporary government census workers and temporary private sector temps account for nearly 100k of the 162k jobs and you need about 140,000 jobs just to run side by side with population growth. I would give it an F+ a good solid B+.

hat’s not what I stated at all. I’ve explained the macroeconomic concepts quite clearly. I’m not sure how you misunderstood.

blink on April 2, 2010 at 12:39 PM

I didn’t mean to misrepresent your argument. You replied to right2bright and agreed with his statement alluding to a previous argument that you made, but you didn’t reference it. I’m not sure that it occurred on this post, so I didn’t attempt to review it. My apologies for any misunderstanding.

The unemployment rate stayed the same because the number of people actively looking for jobs increased. If you’re unemployed and not actively looking for a job (such as “discouraged workers”) you wouldn’t be counted as unemployed. Because the economy seems to be improving, people such as “discouraged workers” have started looking for jobs again.

Jimbo3 on April 2, 2010 at 11:03 AM
So in other words the unemployment rate is actually higher than 9.7 and this is truly little progress.

CWforFreedom on April 2, 2010 at 12:07 PM

–It’s all a matter of how you define it. Right now, the unemployment rate as defined by the Labor Dept is 9.7%.

So, if the economy improves throughout the rest of 2010, then it will help Democrats in the Nov election – even if it turns south in 2011.

But frankly, I don’t see that happening. the momentum from an improved economy will continue to drive new economic growth for some time.

The argument is that the growth won’t be anemic compared to what it could be if the govenment were instituting fiscally conservative policies.

blink on April 2, 2010 at 1:56 PM

The growth won’t translate to anything tangle for the average American. The Democrats will beat the drum that things are improving, but it will ring hollow, so the anemic fake growth won’t help them much during the election. Things will turn south late this year, then we’ll see what happens. Will the government interfere as they did in 2008, or will things be allowed to take their course this time.

The argument is that the growth won’t be anemic compared to what it could be if the govenment were instituting fiscally conservative policies.

blink on April 2, 2010 at 1:56 PM

Spot on again.

This recession would truly be ‘Historic’ if we never recovered from it. We have recovered from each one prior, haven’t we?

In addition, with the ‘administration’ playing with numbers, and the media vowing undying love for anything Obama says, as numbers change because people cannot claim unemployment any longer, or because ‘initial unemployment’ claims drop because we may have hit bottom and companies have trimmed their staff to a bare minimum, do we want to position ourselves as anti-recovery????

No. Nobody is against recovery. We are only against the oppression we are walking into.

bkink, every couple of months lately the BLS changes the way they compute the U6 number. They are simply not counting more and more groups. I’ve made many posts about my research into this and Ed has mentioned it several times as well.

The GDP are easily manipulated as we have seen in the last three reports. If you examine the details closely and drop out all federal spending (which should never be in there since the government produces nothing) the net effect is:

Very close to zero growth. Some economists have gone so far as to claim its actually still negative. Hunt around the web for “actual GDP” and see for yourself. Also check out shadowstats.com.

BTW readers, in terms of actual raw percentages we have way surpassed the unemployment of the depression and have nearly double the raw count of unemployed. That number is increasing every week.

Companies are laying off.
More people are coming into the workforce.
Government is laying off as the porkulus money runs out.
Producers report there is next to no demand for their products.

Funny, but joking aside. I think the use of a costume was fine under those circumstances. If a drive doesn’t notice and yield to a guy in a bunny suit at a crosswalk, then they aren’t going to yield to a normal pedestrian.

I disagree. I think the growth will start to be felt by most Americans by November.

blink on April 2, 2010 at 3:53 PM

You might have been able to say that before passage of health care, but how can you say that now. I don’t see any growth worth mentioning anytime soon. The only hope is to grow another bubble, but we have reached a negative impact of borrowed money on GDP. I think fears that the Democrats are going to ride a recovery in November are unfounded.

While I think there are certainly some dominoes which could cause a huge problem, I don’t think it will occur this cycle.

I think we’re going to get a free pass despite the housing debt problem (BIG problems at Fannie, Feddie, etc.).

I think we’re going to get a free pass on financing for state and federal budgets, too.

This is what’s unfortunate. These free passes this time will reinforce the stupid policies that these big-government idiots have put into place.

The only hope we have is to avoid disaster now and then implement fiscally conservative policies. But if we don’t win back Congress then that’s never going to happen. And if we don’t acknowledge that some sort of recovery will occur this year, then we’re going to risk losing our opportunity.

I think your going to see the health care legislation start a new round of off shoring for production, and where possible services.

DFCtomm on April 2, 2010 at 4:11 PM

You are 100% right about that.

But not this year. Business aren’t smart enough to react that quickly. It will take awhile before the pain is actually felt.

In the meantime, conservatives need to understand this and position themselves correctly. They can’t do that if they don’t understand economics. They can’t do that if they’re predicting immediate doom and gloom.

The democrats would like you to believe this is the first Recession we have ever recovered from, when, in fact, it should have never been this bad, or this long, if it hadn’t been for Obama’s attack on the private sector.

Recovery should have begun about a year ago.

cntrlfrk on April 2, 2010 at 11:20 AM

It wouldn’t have happened at all were it not for the blokes in Washington pumping up a housing bubble well beyond safe levels.

As for those wondering what the economy will do between now and November… it’s best not to try to predict.

We have something else to worry about right now… we need to constantly remind the people of the liberties we just lost with the health care law. No amount of economic recovery matters if we sold our freedoms for it.

Blink, I’d like to jump in here and amplify on your basic notion. I’d expand your point to suggest that as long as we limit our arguments to economics, we’re allowing the left to define the battle space and we might as well just give up now.
Remember, one of the primary underpinnings of Marxist theory is that economics drives human destiny and shapes all of human existence. In their world none of the other parameters of human culture, like religion and philosophy and politics mean anything in the face of the distribution of wealth and the ownership of productive capital. The earth, according to the left, is inhabited by a creature called “homo economus” instead of homo sapiens.
I think we need to base our response to the Obama takeover on the issues of freedom and federalism, and why those values are the foundations of any meaningful prosperity that we may recover for ourselves down the road. After all, if we all end up being taken care of as inmates in the velveteen gulag that these folks envisage for us, what good will all of our “prosperity” do us?
Arguing economics and costs, except in so far as they affect freedom and federalism, is preparing our own ambush.

162k jobs is 162k real people working who were not. I doubt they will see this as bad news.

NextGen on April 2, 2010 at 6:57 PM

Strange days is right, most of those people had a job when Obama took office. The thing is I can remember people comparing Bush to Hoover when the unemployment rate ws 5%. The truth is millions of people are not even being counted anymore on those rolls. It has been down for so long now, that we are expected to celebrate a 9.7% unemployment rate.

Does anybody think the middle class is going to go quietly into the abyss? We’ve seen that movie and we know how it ends.

To be elected in any national race requires only three things to say:

1. I will vote to repeal HCR and I will vote against any bill that helps implement HCR.
2. I will vote to cut taxes and I will vote against any tax increase regardless of purpose.
3. I will vote against any bill that increases government and for any bill that decreases government.

If this was the three prong campaign pitch of all challengers, at least 90% of them would win. Any questions beyond those three should be referred back to those three.

Strange days is right, most of those people had a job when Obama took office.

Terrye on April 2, 2010 at 7:35 PM

Come on, while it’s fair to argue if the recovery would have been faster or slower you have to acknowledge that it takes a new president some time to recover from the kind of economic conditions inherited. I mean even the great Ronald Reagan struggled..

When Reagan took office it took some time:

1980- 7.1% (Carter’s last year)
1981- 7.6 Reagan’s First Year
1982- 9.7 Reagan’s Second Year
1983- 9.6 Reagan’s Third Year

It wasn’t until Reagan’s 4th year in office the unemployment rate started to come down, 1984 it came down to 7.5%, yet I don’t remember people cheer-leading for the United States to fail like I see here.